MOTU Post Crazy Track Counts With New Apple G4 MP

Performer reached 128 tracks with plug-ins on dual 800 G4 01/09/01

CAMBRIDGE, MA - August 31, 2001. MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn, Inc.) has just
completed a preliminary round of performance bench tests running Digital
Performer 3.0 (DP3) on Apple Computer's new 800 MHz dual-processor G4 Power
Macintosh (G4 MP/800) equipped with a MOTU 2408mkII audio interface.
On this completely "native" system, where the computer handles all of the
real-time mixing and effects processing, Digital Performer is able to play
back 128 tracks of 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio with eight bands of parametric EQ
and dynamics processing on each track.
This configuration breaks down as follows: 128 audio voices, 1024 bands of
parametric EQ and 128 dynamics processors. All processing is calculated with
32-bit floating point precision. Digital Performer's included plug-ins were
used for the tests.
"The 128 track count is by no means a ceiling," explains Jim Cooper, MOTU
Marketing Director. "Even higher track counts are possible, depending on how
much real-time effects processing one applies to the mix. But for
bench-testing purposes, we chose 8 bands of parametric EQ plus a dynamics
processor on each track as a way to get across the astonishing power of this
system. I predict that soon, real-world Digital Performer projects with 72
to 100+ tracks and lots of plug-ins will be commonplace."
Several new features recently introduced in Digital Performer made these
tests possible. Most importantly, DP3 supports the MP G4's multiprocessing,
which gives users access to both CPUs in the machine. This effectively
doubles the amount of real-time processing available in DP3 compared to the
G4's single-CPU counterpart. In addition, the extremely high number of
tracks and audio voices were made possible by DP3's new Automatic Voice
Allocation feature, which allows the program to dynamically assign audio
voices as needed from a pool of 96 mono voices and 64 stereo voices (224
voices total).